Reverse Rationalization

Posted on October 26, 2014

Anything can be explained in hindsight. Children often have wonderfully complex excuses. Partners frequently summarize the end of long-term relationships in very simple terms. Our minds constantly generate and rationalize desires. The timing difference is interesting…how we think in the moment versus how we think looking back.

“I’m interested in how people understand things in present tense, and not how they tell the story back to themselves in the past. That’s why I’m not that interested in interviews. People create these narratives of themselves, and it becomes a kind of locked path. All the uncertainty and danger and risk and decision-making are ripped from the telling.” –Laura Poitras

I occasionally see project teams make two separate sales pitches. The first is in advance of the project to convince the client to move forward. The second is following the project to convince the client the team delivered what was expected, made the right decisions or provided sufficient value. It helps to think about both in advance.

“You know, there’s a philosopher who says, ‘As you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, nonrelated events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then, this happens, and it’s overwhelming, and it just looks like what in the world is going on. And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel. But at the time, it don’t.’ ” –The Tao of Joe Walsh